


I Made A Resolution

by Likerealpeopledo



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-15 19:31:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2240763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likerealpeopledo/pseuds/Likerealpeopledo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well I woke up this morning<br/>And I made a resolution,<br/>I said "never going to sing another sad song again."--I Made A Resolution, Sea Wolf</p><p>So clearly, I'm gonna write a sad song.  But not entirely.  It's mostly Alternate Universe, but with some basis in the Mindy/Danny background canon.  It's inspired by what I do in my real life, for work, and how many YA novels I've read in the past little while.</p><p>Kid from the system Danny and comfy suburban nerd Mindy meet at a college admissions interview and hijinx ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Little Orphan Danny

A dark haired, compact teenage boy of about Mindy's age emerges from the Dean’s office, looking slightly sweaty but mostly relieved. Though his interview appears finished, he plops down on the bench next to her and surveys the paperwork in her hand. "Pre-med, huh? That’s a new one for an over achieving female of Asian descent."

"That’s racist."  Mindy doesn't know what to make of this person, but he seems to have decided quite a few things about her.

"You can take a joke. I know you can."

There is something about this boy that makes her oddly comfortable, and sort of perturbed, and she is mostly perturbed by how much she wants to talk to him.  She shrugs, "I probably can. So, what are you doing here?"

"Honestly?"

"No, please lie to me." She has a case of sass mouth like nobody’s business this afternoon. It must be her nerves.

"Honestly. I’m…I’m here for the same reason."

"You want to be pre-med too?"

"I want to not be a fucking bum."  When he curses, he pauses, as if he fully expects her to come down with a case of the vapors, or slap him for his impudence.  She does neither.

"Why would you even think you’d be a bum? You just finished an admissions interview and you’re sitting in the waiting area of an Ivy League school. You’d be a smart bum, I guess."

"They make smart bums, kid. We don’t all have super cushy upper class lives like you do."  His tone is a bit more smug than it is joking.

"How would you know? We’ve shared a bench for three minutes!"

"Look at your purse. And your shoes. Plus, I saw your Mom downstairs on the way in and she does not look like someone who had to scrimp and save to drive you to the City for this thing."

Mindy can’t figure out why she is having this specific conversation with this specific stranger, even if said stranger looks like he fell out of a Banana Republic ad, and talks like he is auditioning for the remake of _The Outsiders_. (Do it for Johnny! She thinks, and almost giggles.) He looks uncomfortable in his preppy button down shirt and khaki pants. "Well, where’s your Mom? Can I analyze her accessories for context clues about your upbringing and personality traits?"

"I came here on my own, thanks. I don’t require hand holding."

Mindy blanches. "Geez, chip on your shoulder much?"

"Sorry." He scoots a little closer on the bench, "I kind of do that a lot. Get mad when I shouldn’t, ya know?" He smiles, "I’m Danny. I should probably wait to insult you until after I know your name."

"Mindy Lahiri. I’ll consider myself insulted." Danny has the longest eyelashes she has ever seen on a male member of the species. They are thick and dark, and fringe chocolate brown eyes that seem warm and lively, even when he’s being kind of an asshole.

Danny keeps talking, even though she hasn’t asked him another question yet. "I don't consider it a chip, per se.  Although, the term “wayward youth” has been used in conjunction with my name, yes. But it’s not my fault. I saw _Good Will Hunting_. It’s not my fault."

Mindy gives him a strange look. "How come they think you're wayward?"

Danny shrugs, "I dunno. Cuz I’ve been in fourteen foster homes, three group homes, about six different anger management classes and a horse farm. They actually called it One Way Farm. I wasn’t sure what way I was supposed to be going, if they were going to put me out to pasture or what."

"Where are your parents? Are you an orphan or something? Do they even still make orphans?"

Danny picks at his jacket, which sits across his lap. Now that she’s closer, she can see that his clothes are threadbare, but well taken care of. He smells fresh, like fabric softener, but with a whiff of teenage boy sweat mingled in. "My dad left when I was a kid, my mom couldn’t take care of us. She kind of flipped out, and stopped working…my grandparents took us in but they passed away…it was a whole thing."

"And that’s it? You just…wait, who is us?"

"I have a little brother, Richie. He’s still in a foster home in Brooklyn. They seemed nice enough but they weren’t really super into having “my kind” he uses air quotes, "through their doors every afternoon. They gave me the old," Danny makes a throat cutting gesture, and a slicing noise, "heave ho after I may or may not have torn the stereo out of the wall and thrown it onto one of the numbered streets."

"How come?"

"I dunno."  His accent is strong, and his voice is deep.  Deeper than most of the boys back home. 

"You say that a lot."

"I dunno why."

"You’re screwing with me, aren’t you?"

"How so?"

"Your life; that isn’t really your story, is it?"

"I wish it wasn’t." Danny gives a low whistle. "You’re too pretty to care about what my story is."

Mindy blushes. She doesn’t get a lot of attention from boys. She pushes her glasses up on her nose. "I think you seem really interesting."

"Yeah, that’s the word I’d use to describe myself. Interesting."

"So where do you stay now?"

Danny shrugs again. His shoulders are loose, they don’t want to stay still. He’s so careful to make every gesture non-committal. "Wherever I can. Couches, mostly. My friend Stevie, his mom doesn’t mind if I stay in their basement. She," he tips back an imaginary beer, "doesn’t notice if I’m there, as long as I don’t get in the way. I’m on probation, so I can’t leave the Tri-State area."  Clearly, boundaries are not a thing with Danny Last Name Not Included.

"What’d you do?"

"Who the hell knows. Everything. Stealing, fighting, the good stuff. No murder."

Her eyebrows jump. "You have to clarify no murder to people??"

"It comes up."

"Now you’re jerking me around."

"Kind of." He smiles. Mindy knows how Danny gets what he needs; it’s that smile when his eyes corroborate it. She has never talked this long to a member of the opposite sex when it wasn’t about a geometry proof, or at debate club. "You scared of me now?"

"Do you want me to be?" This seems like flirting. Her friends Alex and Maggie tell her about it all the time, the ways that they get guys to pay attention to them. Mindy can’t figure out what vibe she’s putting out there that is making this handsome delinquent give her the time of day. She’s thinking about asking him when he stands up to leave.

"Listen, this has been swell, but I gotta book. I have to meet my PO, I can’t be late again." Danny wipes his hands on his khakis, and holds one out to her, in a handshake. It seems oddly formal for someone that has no viable support system and just read her his rap sheet. "I hope I see you around."

"Me too." Mindy squeaks. Isn’t this where he should ask for her number? Should she ask for his? Why doesn’t she want him to leave?

"Listen," he pulls a notebook out of his backpack and scribbles his name and some digits on one of the pages. He tears it out and thrusts it into her lap. "That’s Stevie’s house. Call me, and I promise you, I can show you a good time. They’re out on the Island, though, so… "

"Island?" Mindy pushes her glasses up, again, with the palm of her hand. She’s just visiting for the weekend, from Boston, she has no idea what Island he’s referring to, maybe Long Island? Or Staten? She thinks that she needs to do some research before she comes here for school.

"Yeah, Staten. If you…have you seen the Statue of Liberty yet?" Danny is standing above her, the sun lighting him from behind. He glows in the late afternoon sun. She wonders if she’s imagining him, if he’s a stress reaction brought on by excessive study and worry over screwing up a college admissions interview. "It’s pretty amazing, even after you’ve seen it a bazillion times. I can, I could take you to see it. If you wanted." He suddenly seems very sheepish. It doesn’t compute with the rest of the way he’s presented in the waiting area.

"I can’t really," Mindy starts to tell him that she’s staying with her mom at the Plaza and they’re going shopping for prom dresses, even though she doesn’t have a date yet, and doesn’t expect to get one. But she stops, "How can I meet up with you?"

Danny rocks back on his heels, in thought. "I’ve been a good boy this month; let me make some calls." 

As Danny starts to turn, the secretary calls out in a monotone, "Mindy Lahiri, Dean Speck will see you now."

Every axon and dendrite in her body tingles with anticipation, and she doesn’t know if it’s from her impending interview with the Dean or her upcoming adventure with Danny.  Maybe a little from Column A and a little from Column B, she smiles to herself, as she turns to greet her interviewer and sees Danny half jogging down the hallway to a set of payphones, pumping his arm in the air victoriously.


	2. I Think I'm Going to Like It Here

__

“Don’t have your sea legs, huh? The ferry doesn’t usually incite such violent motion sickness.” Danny cracks, and Mindy doesn’t find him the least bit amusing. Her stomach is located somewhere near her throat, and she might not be a doctor yet, but that is not where it should be located. The nausea overwhelms her, makes her skin clammy and her thoughts cloudy. He could be anyone: a rapist, a murderer, a grifter, a sea captain. Anyone, and she doesn’t know him at all. She has a weirdly informative conversation on an uncomfortable bench with a cute guy and she thinks she knows something about him? But she doesn’t know anything, and she’s sick and miserable. First she lied to her mother (telling her she was meeting a friend from camp at Serendipity for frozen hot chocolates because her Mom knows she is a fool for John Cusack movies.  Mindy reasons that it is at least remotely believable, because meeting a boy and going on an impromptu date was never going to fly) and now she’s going to the second location. _The second location._

This is a terrible idea. She thought it would be romantic, like he’s Judd Nelson in _The Breakfast Club_ and she’s Molly Ringwald and they’re going to teach each other life lessons and hopefully make out on the ferry.  Standing in the Dean's office, she could envision the wind ruffling her hair while the Statue of Liberty loomed majestically over their first impassioned embrace.   Instead, she is most likely going to throw up on her new Tory Burch flats while a stranger (however luscious his frigging eyelashes are) who is possibly kidnapping her holds her hair out of her face while she dry heaves. She wonders if Stevie’s basement comes equipped with a pit. “I will not put the lotion in the basket!”

Danny gives her a quizzical look, and continues to rub concentric circles on her back as he gently nudges her head between her knees. “Easy, Tiger.”

Mindy is too busy practicing Lamaze type breathing with her ears pressed to her inner thighs to catch the Statue of Liberty as the ferry slides by and she hears Danny sigh loudly. “Plan B, Lahiri. We’re heading to the Island.” Even though she feels like she got hit by the banana boat, to hear Danny say her last name like they're familiar, it gives her a tiny thrill, all the way to the tips of her toes. 

He helps her off the boat at St. George Terminal, treating her very gingerly. It reminds her of how her Dad walks her elderly great aunt from her car to the brunch table on Sundays. “Better? Dry land, kiddo, so if you want to kiss it, or whatever,” Danny pats her back, with the platonic “one, two” motion and the contents of Mindy’s stomach lurch onto the pavement. “Well, that’s one way.”

As if she isn’t mortified enough, she’s covered both herself and Danny with the remnants of the lunch that she and her mother had in Times Square, two and a half hours earlier, back when she was still a well behaved, truth telling, straight A earning college bound high school senior. She finds her eyes welling up with tears, which is a completely natural post-vomit reaction, but not in front of a guy that she wants to impress with her wit, charm, and grace. “Ohmygod, I’m so embarrassed.”

Danny’s face doesn’t portray the disgust that she imagines he must feel. He just says, very evenly, “Stevie’s isn’t far from here. We’ll get you cleaned up.”

Mindy follows Danny obediently and she is suddenly much less worried that she is being led to a hostage situation, but far more that she will never, ever be the kind of person who performs well on spontaneous outings with attractive boys. It doesn't take them long to arrive at a small, well kept aluminum sided home on a tree lined street.  The house looks nothing like she’s ever pictured in New York, but then again, this is Staten Island.

“Someone else’s home sweet home.” Danny announces, gesturing with flourish.

“It’s nice.” She whispers.

“It’s okay. I have my own room, which is rare.” Danny whispers back. “Why are we whispering?”

She has no idea. It just feels like she needs to be reverential on someone else’s lawn. “No reason.”  Until the boat, she had forgotten to be awkward and weird, like she normally is around members of the opposite sex. After she manages to get sick directly onto the pants of her date (is this a date?), muscle memory kicks in and she can’t remember how to walk and talk at the same time anymore. She has a bad feeling that she is about to commence that nervous talking thing that Alex always verbally swats her for, “How long have you known Stevie? Have you stayed here long? Is it close to your school?”

Danny leads her up the sidewalk and around to a side door. It doesn’t look like anyone else is at home; the lights are off and the house seems still. The interior smells like garlic and women’s flowery perfume. Danny flips on a few lights and takes her through the kitchen, which is cluttered and kind of small, toward the basement door. “This is me.”

He rumbles down the basement steps, briefly leading her by the wrist. His fingers are soft on her skin. “Do you have something I can change into?” His eyebrows jete at her request and she realizes that it sounds like the opening line to one of the Skinemax porn movies she and Maggie snuck last summer after her parents went to bed.  “I smell terrible.” Well, that’ll do it, Mindy thinks. He won’t be thinking about doing me on the kitchen stove now.

Danny stands in front of another closed door that sits off what looks like a rec room. “My humble abode.” He turns the knob to reveal a neatly made twin sized bed with a crucifix hanging on the wall behind it. A few trophies line the glass block window well and a Columbia pennant rests behind them. Two black garbage bags sit in the corner.

Before she knows what’s happening, Danny is stripped down to his socks and a pair of black boxer briefs and digging through the garbage bags. If she wasn’t so freaked out, she’d totally be admiring the smooth lines of his back, and from the brief time he faced her, the definition of his pectoral muscles. He has a tiny smattering of chest hair, and what does Alex call the hair that leads down from his belly button into his boxers? The happy trail? Holy hell. Happy trails are where it’s at. “What are you doing?”

“Finding us a change of clothes, weirdo.”

“In the trash?”

Danny’s neck and face redden, “Um, this is my luggage.”

Crap, crap, crap. “Duh.” Idiot. “Do you think we could throw my stuff in the washing machine? I don’t know how I’m going to explain wearing someone else’s clothes to my mom.”

Danny jumps back up from his crouching position, handing her a sweatshirt that says St. Peter Eagles and a pair of black sweatpants. He finds similar clothing for himself and begins pulling it on, much to her dismay. Mindy catches one more glimpse of the happiest trail she’s ever laid eyes on and sighs involuntarily. “The Tangredi’s don’t have one. We can go to the Laundromat, I guess?” This is quickly becoming nothing like she pictured. Her dream date: a half hour nausea filled ferry ride with a cute, possibly dangerous boy, to do her laundry on Staten Island.

Of course, her dating history is hardly vast. She can count her number of first dates on both her hands, and the number of second or third dates on one. Mindy enjoys more of the plotting and planning than the actual execution of a relationship. Junior year, Mindy spent three months outlining and exacting a plan to ensnare an unsuspecting Cliff Gilbert, who ran track and captained her debate team. He had sky blue eyes and talked to her like he was reading from the LSAT prep book. His vocabulary was immense, and she often fantasized about what their mixed race children would look like. It was no matter, though, because after three months of following his exact schedule, tracking his comings and goings, and keeping an intensive log of their interactions, Heather Markowitz bought him tickets to the Bruins game and the rest was history. Granted, she was treated to an in-depth, almost photo journalistic, catalog of pictures from the game on Heather's Facebook, so there was that. 

Mindy quickly realizes that Danny is staring at her, while she stands gaping, in his tiny borrowed bedroom. “The Laundromat, yeah. That’d be cool.” This is not cool at all.  Translating Latin phrases on Saturday night after going to the Cheesecake Factory with Gwen, Alex, and Maggie is cooler than this, whatever the hell this is.  But she's begun her own life of crime, and she has tracks to cover now.   She figures she and Danny are about a load of laundry away from having to go full Bonnie and Clyde.  She wonders if there will be a cute hat available for the inevitable gun fight.

“Yes. Cool.” Danny doesn’t seem to know what to do with his limbs anymore, so he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his faded jeans. He does this thing where his shoulders shift around his ears, and it makes him seem like a little boy, and no longer the confident adult that sidled up to her after his interview. 

Now that she’s seen him with no pants on (and now there are pants where there were no pants), Mindy worries that maybe she’s reached the apex of this entire experience.

Danny shows her to the bathroom, and finds her a fresh toothbrush in a box under the sink. He leaves her alone as she brushes the foul taste from her mouth and makes sure no chunkage has managed to attach itself anywhere else on her person. She examines her face in the mirror, trying to see what he possibly saw this afternoon. Same nose, same glasses, same chin, same brown eyes. Same ten pounds that she argues with about leaving her midsection, but never quite gets angry enough at to demand its absence. Nothing special. She finds her lip gloss in her purse and tries to pinch some color that isn’t green into her cheeks. She reminds herself that he’s already seen the contents of her stomach, and watched her expel it, so pretty much, nothing about her eyeliner is going to change his opinion of her.

Curiosity overtakes Mindy, and she opens the medicine cabinet to examine its contents. Deodorant, cologne, bandages, antibiotic ointment; it could be anyone’s. No bottles of prescription medication, which she takes as a positive. But there is nothing that says anything here belongs to Danny. She quickly pees and washes her hands again, and opens the door to find Danny looking anxious.

“Were you rediscovering your womanhood in there or what?” His eyes dart around, and she can see the sweat on his upper lip. “Listen, I can’t have people over here, and Stevie’s mom is due home any second. I turned 18 a couple months ago, so I literally have nowhere else to go if I piss off Mrs. Tangredi. No foster home, no group home, just a camp under the 59th Street Bridge, so if we could kindly get the hell out of here, that would be aces.”

_The third location._

Mindy notices that Danny has her clothes in a canvas bag hooked over his shoulder, and a bottle of laundry detergent dangles from his finger tips.  "I hope it's okay.  I brought some of my stuff too.  Two birds, one stone and everything."   His voice is softer, and she notices that the sweater he's wearing has _Castellano_ emblazoned on the back of it as he turns to lead her up the stairs.

Danny Castellano.  Daniel Castellano.  Mrs. Mindy...oh, don't be ridiculous, you're seventeen frigging years old, she chides herself.  Mindy digs into her purse and finds her cell phone to text her Mom:  _Going to movie and dinner with Sam.  Hotel by 11._

She feels her heart beat quicken as she anticipates her mother's response of, _No way, young lady, we made plans and you will abide by them; get back this instant_.  In a small way, that's the answer that she wants, because then she doesn't have to a) be murdered or b) take the absolute risk that she humiliates herself further.  She'd really rather choose the murder than increased embarrassment.   When her phone vibrates in response, she is flummoxed to see, _Of course, honey, have fun._

_The third location.  
_

 


	3. We Need To Talk About Fabric Softener

Danny ambles up to the attendant to make change from the crumpled dollar bills he’s extracted from his pocket and Mindy begins to sort their load into lights and darks. She is having trouble processing the fact that she is touching the unmentionables of a new to her, albeit adorable boy. A slip of notebook paper with neat block hand-writing flutters to the ground at Mindy’s feet.

WHY ARE THE RED SOX THE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO AMERICA?

ASK HER HOBBIES, WHAT SHE DOES ON WEEKENDS

DON’T TELL HER ABOUT CHRISTINA

“Well, Mr Calm Cool and Collected, I guess you’re a mess just like the rest of us.” Mindy smiles, feeling more relieved than anything. Sociopaths rarely have to remind themselves to ask about your hobbies, she thinks.

“You wrote down what you were going to say to me?” She says as Danny returns, jingling the quarters in his palm. The blush spreads from his neck to the tips of his ears quickly, efficiently.

“You were in that interview for awhile.” He shrugs and quickly snatches the paper out of her open hand. “Whatever. I am sure that you do weirder things than that.”

Mindy knocks him with her hip, in an abnormally familiar gesture for someone that she’s only known a few hours. A few hours, and she’s already wearing his clothes. She’s always had those fantasies; wearing the letter jacket, the class ring, the old fashioned going steady and drinking a milk shake with two straws picture of high school dating from watching rom-coms and old television shows, and that wasn’t how high school had turned out at all. Granted, it wasn’t the fifties anymore, so what should she have expected? But Danny seemed weirdly old-fashioned, someone that her mom would call an “old soul”. He didn’t even have a cell phone, that she could tell. So maybe he had those old-fashioned fantasies too. “I do not do weird things. I do perfectly normal and average things.”

Danny snaps the door of the washer into place and goes about dropping in the coins. “If that helps you sleep at night, babe.”

Mindy gives him a dirty look. “You’re definitely weirder than me.”

“I’m an orphan!” Danny exclaims, mostly joking. “Well, that’s not true either, seeing as both my parents are alive and kicking, even as much as I wish one of them wasn’t.” He looks down at the dirty ceramic tile, bouncing the toe of his sneaker off the bottom of the wall. His eyes are hooded by his lashes, and Mindy isn’t sure if she’s lost the thread of the conversation.

“Do you still see your Mom?”

Danny shrugs. “I see her every Sunday at Mass and after, we have lunch. Sometimes we can go get Richie and take him out, too. We’re like a family on Sundays.” He says the last sentence with just a trace of bitterness, a light underlying sarcasm.

“So why don’t you live with her now?” Mindy presses, holding her breath involuntarily.

“Her lease, she can only have one person staying there… I help her out as much as I can. She hurt her back last year and couldn’t work for awhile again, so I picked up some jobs to help her make ends meet. I don’t want to be a burden.”

“But you’re her kid. You’re supposed to be a burden. I’m a huge financial succubus for my parents.”

“Yeah. I can tell.” Danny smiles and hoists himself up onto one of the folding tables, and gestures for Mindy to climb up next to him. “But it’s been a long time since I felt like I was someone’s kid.”

Mindy has never wanted to hug someone more. Instead she pulls at the sleeve of Danny’s sweatshirt and doesn't respond.  Danny takes her silence as a signal to continue.

“You look good in my stuff. Not every girl can pull off the St Peter’s sweater.” Their legs bob against one another as they dangle off the edge of their perch. Mindy can feel Danny’s breath on her neck. He likes to put his face close when he talks to her, always just a few inches, always just too close to be fully in focus.

“Thanks.”

“There’s a party later, at this guy Lang’s house. It’s gonna be a rager.” It’s unnerving how quickly Danny can skirt between vulnerable and not. “You should come.”

“I have to get back to the hotel. My Mom is already going to send out a search party.”

“C’mon Lahiri. You rearranged your stomach contents to come out here, and it wasn’t just to wash your delicates. Live a little.”

“I have lived plenty, thank you.”

“Yeah? What’s the live-iest thing you’ve ever done?”

Mindy ponders momentarily. “I got on the Staten Island Ferry with a complete stranger.”

“So I’m the most living you’ve ever done?” Danny smirks, clearly satisfied with her answer.

“I haven’t _done_ you, Danny.” She is glad that her skin does not reveal its flush easily. “ So what if I don’t spend my time playing in traffic and getting arrested, like some people? I’m a seventeen year old girl from the suburbs. It’s like psychological warfare every day. Am I thin enough? Am I acting white enough? Do I have the right clothes, am I talking to the right person, am I going to get a date for prom? There are bodies strewn on every cul de sac.”

“Who cares what other people think? That’s what I don’t get. Girls are always so worried about each other, they never figure out what means anything to them.”

“I have to care what other people think, Danny.”

“What good does it do you?” Mindy can tell that other people have not really done Danny much good, considering his circumstances.

“Because caring what people think means that I make friends, and have a social life.”

“But you’re doing things that you don’t necessarily want to do, right? Because someone else is telling you it’s what everyone is doing, you just do it?”

Mindy shrugs, “I guess. But it’s not like we’re out robbing banks or hooked on the nose candy or something.”

Danny laughs, “Just follow the leader, huh? You figure I’m never gonna be a cappo, I’ll go out a foot soldier?”

“That is not a sentence that I identify with.” Mindy doesn’t have a good argument for why she cares more about what Alex, Gwen, and Maggie would say about her outfit than how she feels about it herself. Why she cares more what Danny thinks of her, when she just met him. “Do you have a lot of friends, Lone Wolf?”

Danny nods. “Of course I do.” He tilts his head, as if he is trying to mentally name them all. “Okay, I don’t have a ton. I know people. But friend…that might be too specific a term for it.” He touches the side of her thigh, maybe accidentally, and it sends a surge of electricity through her. “That’s sort of why I talked to you today.”

“How so?” Mindy wants him to brush up against her, just to feel that thrill again. Instead, he shifts enough that their legs completely separate from one another. Her skin feels cool in its absence. “I just…I liked the idea of having a friend once I got to school. New place, new life. My school counselor made a really good point a couple weeks ago, that no one has to know where I came from, I can start over. So I just kind of figured that the first person I saw, I was gonna be their friend. And to my surprise, you were all over it.” He smiles, that crooked stupidly beautiful smile that she knows has melted the pants off of more than one girl in its wake.

“You didn’t leave me much choice. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.” She brightens at her Godfather reference. “See what I did there?”

Danny laughs, “It's slightly more effective when you don’t point it out, paisan.” The washing machine loudly announces its launch into the spin cycle. “So we’re friends now?”

“I think that once you hold my hair while I ralph, we’re friends.” Mindy can’t figure out what it is, how she can be so nervous and yet so comfortable with him, all at the same time. Usually when she talks to boys, she practically breaks her neck with all the bending over backward she does to make them pay attention to her. Danny seems to want to pay attention, even when she’s not trying.

“Your weak stomach brought us together. I like it.” Danny hops down off the counter and holds his hand out to help her down. Chivalrous. “So you want April Fresh or Mountain Rain fabric softener? Personally, I’m old school, I enjoy some April Freshness in my undershirts. I find it soothing. But you do you.” Mindy selects a dryer sheet from the two options in his hand.

“This one.”

“Good choice.” Danny studies the front loading washer as it begins to come to a stop. “I think you should come to that party with me, Mindy.”

"On one condition."  Mindy can't believe she is agreeing to this.  She knows that she is running out of alibis to give her mother, but she hates the idea that once her clothes come out of the dryer, her carriage turns into a pumpkin again. 

Danny's eyes widen, seemingly in shock.  "What's that?"

"You have to tell me about Christina."

 


	4. Best Laid Plans

Danny busies himself transferring their wet clothes into the dryer, and doesn’t catch Mindy’s eye. She stands, with her hand on her hip, waiting for his response. He wouldn’t have put it on the list if he didn’t really want her to ask, eventually, she rationalizes. Or he’s trying to think of a way to sprint out of The Laundry Room laundromat and vanish into the early evening haze.

He turns back to her, slamming the door on the dryer closed. “I promise I will, that I will tell you about her, but not right this second, okay?”

She trusts him. Plus, what choice does she have? “Okay.”

As she agrees to be patient, a gangly blond teenaged boy and a shorter, buxom brunette enter, calling out to Danny. “Little D!”

Danny freezes momentarily and Mindy can see that he is strongly considering climbing into one of the front loaders in an effort to hide. “Stevie! What’s up?” High fiving and fist bumping commences. Mindy attempts to make herself invisible, picking up on Danny’s anxiety. “Mindy, this is Stevie. Stevie, this is Mindy. I met her up at Columbia and now I’m showing her around.”

Danny's friend is tall, and his face is long and angular.  He is almost the complete opposite of Danny's dark Mediterranean features.  Stevie gives Mindy the once-over, and pauses on her breasts. She crosses her arms over her chest in defense. “Hey Mindy, how’d you let Little D talk you into doing his laundry?”

Danny seems even tenser now, like he’s been caught doing something illicit. “The ride over on the ferry wasn’t very kind to Mindy. We had to wash her clothes.” Mindy is grateful not to discuss the unkind ferry any further.

“Hey, you don’t owe me any explanation, D. You just don’t usually bring girls here is all.” Stevie’s laugh booms, even over the machines.“Oh shit, where are my manners? Mindy, this is my girl, Suzanne.”

Upon further inspection, Suzanne is wearing about eight pounds of bronzer and her eyes are painstakingly made to look like Cleopatra. “Your eyes,” Mindy begins, “That is amazing work.”

Suzanne looks proud, “Getting perfect cat eyes with liquid liner is some kind of sorcery. Seriously, I needed to go to Hogwarts to get this shit right.”

“Mindy is coming to Langs’ party with us tonight, so we’ll see you around, then?” Danny's fists clench involuntarily and he seems about three seconds away from shooing them away with a broom. Mindy can imagine him yelling at kids to get off his lawn.

“We’ll all go together. It’ll be fun.” Suzanne nudges Mindy. “If you need something to wear, I have some stuff that might fit you. I mean, since Danny’s St Pete’s stuff is not like, party ready.”

“Suz, your step-mom is gonna set us up, right?” Stevie puts an arm around Suzanne’s shoulder.

“Oh God, you’re making me ask Beverly? I just talked to her last week, so we could get that beer for the party in the quarry.”

Danny nods, “She’s the only adult we know that will buy us beer. Plus, I think she has a crush on me?”

Suzanne rolls her eyes so hard that Mindy can almost feel her own retinas twitch, “She totally has the hots for young Castellano over here. Last time Danny was over, Beverly growled at him. Like, Catwoman. It was super gross.”

“I can’t help that older women enjoy me. She told me I reminded her of a young Orson Welles. I have no idea if that’s a compliment or an insult.”

“I think she meant it as a compliment. She was definitely undressing you with her eyes at the time.” Suzanne shivers in disgust. “Anywho, let’s get going, Steven. We’ll stop by my house and, ugh, coerce my step-monster into supplying us, and grab some options for Mindy here. We’ll see you guys back at Stevie’s!”

With Stevie and Suzanne safely out the door, Danny’s shoulders relax. “Well, now we’re double dating. Things are moving at lightning speed, huh?” His tone doesn’t betray how he actually feels about this development. “If you don’t want to go, I totally understand.”

Mindy shakes her head. “No, I want to. It sounds like it’s gonna be fun.” And probably the last fun Mindy may have as a living, breathing teenager. Once her mother finds out about this, she may not leave the house again well into her forties. “So, what’s this about Christina?”

Danny exhales sharply. “Yeah, I think I need some of Beverly’s grain alcohol before I get into all that.”

“Okay, what are some questions that you will answer?” Mindy taps her foot, settling into one of the plastic chairs along the wall with the dryers. She can smell the fabric softener through the vents. Danny’s right; it is soothing. “What’s your middle name, Daniel?”

“Don’t have one.” Danny crosses his arms and falls into the seat next to her. Their limbs connect again, and this time, Danny doesn’t move his away. “They told some me story about how I was born with the cord around my neck and they weren’t sure if I’d live so they just hurried up and put one name on the birth certificate.”

“And you don’t believe them?”

“Well, for one, my parents aren’t known for their strict adherence to the truth and b, I have a sneaking suspicion having a middle name cost extra or something.” Danny taps her thigh. “Enough about me. Tell me more about you. What are you into? What do you do with your time?” This sounds eerily like his reminder list, but she can’t fault him for taking an interest.

Mindy lists off her yearbook summary, detailing her clubs and activities, when Danny cuts her off, “Yeah, but what do you, like, do? Really?”

Mindy stops, puzzled. “What do you mean? That is what I do. I go to school and I’m involved in all those extra-curricular activities. I have a very full schedule.”

“But do you do those things because you like them or because you’re trying to get into an Ivy League school and they fill out your application?”

Mindy pauses, picking at the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She does them because she should, because she wants her parents to be proud of her, because she wants to be popular and fashionable and her own role model, damnit. “Because I like them, Danny! You’re so skeptical, all the time. Isn’t that exhausting?”

His lips flex into a small smile. His chin has a tiny indentation and she wonders if her thumb would fit into it. She wants to touch his face, and realizes that she’s been staring at his lips since she stopped talking. “You build up a tolerance. It’s like running, you spend enough time getting disappointed, you just develop a stamina for it.” Now it seems like he’s looking at her lips. “I think there is more to you than just Debate Club and Future Fashionistas of America, or whathaveyou. I know there is.”  Here he is, with his face too close to really make out his features clearly.  It is so disconcerting.

Mindy doesn’t want to disappoint him, but she isn’t sure that there is. She’s seventeen years old, for crying out loud. She’s barely been out of Boston, never spent anytime outside of her parent’s house that wasn’t a slumber party or summer camp. These four hours with Danny are the first she’s even felt like she was capable of breaking free. And she didn’t even know she wanted or needed to, before this afternoon. “I’m just a enigma, wrapped in a mystery, and smothered in secret sauce Danny. Get used to it.”

Danny’s smile broadens, and traps her in its tractor beam. “I think tonight is going to be a fucking blast.”


	5. My Pirate Days

Mindy’s never seen this many sequins in one place, that weren’t on a prom dress, or on an episode of _Project Runway_. But from the assortment of skirts and tops options that Suzanne has brought for Mindy to wear, it is apparent that the world’s sequin population has relocated to Staten Island. Mindy tries on a black and silver sequined mini-skirt with a chevron design that hugs her hips but makes her legs look about a mile long, no small feat for the legs of someone who is five feet two on a good day. She wears her own magenta tank top and a little black cardigan that Suzanne has supplied.

Checking herself out in the mirror in the Tangredi’s basement, she feels like she could actually pass for a college student. Maybe she’ll even buy tonight’s beer.

She finds Danny, freshly showered, wearing dark jeans and a dark blue button down shirt, his sleeves rolled up. She can smell his cologne, not too strong and woodsy, and his soap. She thinks she may be imagining it, but he may have developed a tiny five o’clock shadow since the afternoon. She resists reaching up to his jaw to see if it’s as scratchy as it looks. “You…you look amazing.”

Mindy mentally thanks Suzanne for leaving her with a bag of make up and other beauty products, because Danny is really staring at her. Like, through her. “You look nice too.” Mindy chirps, unconsciously smoothing down her skirt. The sequins are sharp against her palms and remind her that she’s still out of place here. “Where’d Stevie go?”

“He went to go pick up Suzanne and the brews. They’ll be back any minute.” Danny gestures to the sofa in the Tangredi’s living room. It is covered in plastic. As a matter of fact, all the furniture is. It creaks as Danny sits back down and Mindy is afraid that her thighs will stick to the vinyl material. She perches on the edge, in a move that she hopes appears more casual than frightened. For the first time all day, Mindy is starting to feel suffocated by the silence between them. Even though he’s right there next to her, Danny seems very far away. Even his facial features are in focus, he’s so far away. She admires, and then questions the functionality of, his tiny ears. There is a hole in his lobe where his ear was pierced. She reaches up to his ear, and Danny turns, surprised by the contact. “Yeah, in my pirate phase.” He says dryly, answering a question that she didn’t ask yet. “It was dumb.”

Mindy drops her hand back into her lap. “I can’t imagine you with a pierced ear. It doesn’t really fit with your personality.”

“What is my personality?”

“I don’t know. You’re an old man in a smoking hot teenaged body. You used to do bad things, but now you’re reformed. You’re a hooker with a heart of gold.”

Danny turns to face her, and his eyes are narrow and dark.  “How do you know I’m reformed? Cause I told you I was?”

“Danny, I met you at Columbia University. You were dressed in your Sunday best. I watched you walk out of the same office I went into. You’re not the hardened criminal you pretend to be.”

He cocks his head. “I guess not. But I could be. You just believed me.”

“So? You’re not to be believed?” Mindy sees the headlights of Stevie’s car pull into the driveway. “How do you know that you can believe anything I say?”

Danny trains his eyes up and down, “I know that you’re not lying about who you are.”

“But you don’t even know me.” It comes out whinier than she means it to, but she’s tired of him presuming that he knows so much about her, from her shoes or her purse, or her Mom.

“Listen, Mindy, I can read people. I know when they’re full of shit and when they’re genuine, and in your case, I think you are genuinely full of shit. But it’s not your fault, you’re just sheltered. Also, I think you’re cute. More than cute.” Danny’s moods swerve more than a ride on the bumper cars. “So tonight, no matter what you hear about me, or who we might run into, just remember: I’m not lying.”  She holds her breath as he laces his fingers through hers and pulls her out the front door.

_This is going to be a bumpy ride._


	6. The Best Day (or the Worst Day) Turned Into Drunk

If Mindy reviews the events of the day, every day, until her fortieth birthday, she will still never understand how she came to be sitting in the backseat of Stevie Tangredi’s Mazda Miata, crushed into the torso and lap of 18-year-old Danny Castellano, with whom she had been acquainted exactly seven hours. She has precisely three hours before her mother will begin to text her, inquiring of her whereabouts. Three hours to figure out if this was the best day, or the worst day, or if it turns into drunk. Because it was well on its way in that direction already.

Danny hands Mindy the flask after taking his own swig. She stares at it for as long as she can without seeming like someone who does not traditionally drink from shiny silver flasks handed to her in backseats of cars. She and Gwen once drew a mustache on Casey Pierson when he overindulged and passed out after a party at Alex’s house, but he was dressed as a minister for Halloween, and ended up looking like a food poisoned magician. She doesn’t know if that’s the kind of thing that happens at Staten Island parties, and honestly, she isn’t sure if she’s ready to know. The alcohol burns as it slides down her throat and she coughs involuntarily. Danny jumps back (as far as he can, smooshed into this clown car) clearly out of reflex, considering their mid-afternoon. “Ooh, that’s…ooh.” Mindy tries to cover. The liquor sends a sliver of warmth all the way to her nether regions. She takes another long sip, trying to find that warmth again. She notices the sideways admiring look that Danny gives her and it gives her equal warmth, in a similar area.

Stevie catches Mindy’s eye in the rear-view mirror, “So, Mindy, did Little D hook you with his patented ‘my parents abandoned me and I have no one’ spiel?”  Suzanne slaps at his shoulder, “What? Girls lap that shit up. It’s like coochie kryptonite.”

Danny groans, “Jesus, Steve.” Danny finds her hand again and gives it a squeeze. “Shut up.” The car rolls to a stop in front of a house with the yard already crowded with cars and people. Music blares over the speakers on the front porch. Mindy hears Danny mutter, “Thank God,” under his breath and they gradually unfold themselves from their cramped positions and emerge from the car.

Suzanne pulls Mindy aside, her eyes now glittering with shadow to compliment her complicated cats’ eyes. “Don’t let Danny give you that whole ‘I was a teenage jailbird’ routine. Everything he ever stole, he did it for his kid brother. He’s freaking Robin Hood.” She straightens Mindy’s skirt, tugging on one side that’s ridden up, “His temper, though, that’s legit. Like, seriously Hulk-like. For a little guy, he can get super aggro. But not with girls, don’t worry about that.”

Mindy doesn’t even know what to do with this information. “Yeah, his temper, I really don’t think…”

“And I mean this in the nicest way, so like, don’t take offense,” Even in her short seventeen years, Mindy knows that the phrase “no offense” is code for, “I’m about to piss you off, so take offense, but don’t blame me,” so she braces herself for what comes next, “Danny doesn’t really get attached to people, but he tends to, um, how do I say this delicately, pick up strays a lot.” Suzanne blows a puff of air. “It’s, like, his thing. So just, be careful, okay? You seem really sweet, and you look bangable hot in that skirt. So just, don’t, don’t think that he’s all in for some whirlwind romance.”

Mindy feels her heart drop into her spleen. “I, I, I don’t.” She stammers, and turns to find Danny standing three inches from her face. “I think I made a mistake.” She blurts out.

His eyebrows furrow and he seems genuinely perplexed. “Mindy, what’s wrong? Do you feel sick again? Do you need to put your head between your legs?” He places a steadying hand on the small of her back. She hates how good it feels.

“ _Don’t believe what other people tell you tonight; I’m not lying_. Why did you tell me that, Danny?”

Danny pulls back, “Because Christina might be here, and I haven’t had a chance to explain that debacle. Why do you think I told you that?”

Mindy takes a breath, and releases it slowly. Of course, Christina. The mysteriously listed Christina. “Because of Christina.”

“Speak of the fucking devil.” His voice dips low and gravelly, and sends a shiver through her. “Christina.”

The aforementioned Christina is excruciatingly thin and blonde, with cheekbones that can slice bread, and an expression that belies her contempt for all that surrounds her. She seems out of place; willowy and mature, with an asymmetrical hair cut that only people with extreme bone structure can successfully wear. She holds a cigarette and looks bored. Mindy hasn’t had a boyfriend, but she knows what it looks like when a male looks wistfully at a female, and that is exactly how Danny looks at Christina, until he notices that Mindy noticed, and then he makes his face do this inscrutable thing, that she’s already registered as part of his general countenance.

“What’s her deal?”

“She’s too good for the Island, so she’s going to art school in Manhattan. The medium she works in is ball busting and photography.” Danny mumbles, handing Mindy a beer from the six pack that Stevie bestowed upon them in the car. “Let’s go find Lang.”

Danny introduces Mindy to Charlie Lang, who turns out to be closer to 21, with a Staten accent thicker than Danny’s. Charlie gives Mindy an appraising look, and claps Danny on the back as they walk away. “He’s leaving for the police academy this summer, so I guess underage drinking is not high on his list of priorities.”

Danny finds an unoccupied set of lawn chairs nearby and flings himself into one, “Sit.”

“So what happened with Christina? You’ve got your liquid courage now.”

Danny fingers the beer can, turning it in his hands, “What’s to tell? I loved her, and then…she didn’t love me back. You know, the standard stuff.”

Mindy seriously doubts that is all there is to it, although Danny has proven to be a bit overly dramatic. He’s her very own soap opera come to life. “Come on.”  She wants to say, this is me you're talking to, but she quickly realizes that doesn't mean much.   They have a history that she hasn't learned yet.  

Danny can’t seem to look her in the eye, “We had a scare, end of junior year. She was late. I called her literally every hour to see if her period had come yet. Weird thing, though, I think I wanted the baby more than I didn’t. I don’t know. She, clearly, did not. Because we broke up right after the pregnancy test turned out negative. And then,” Danny pauses, “There were the nudes.”

“The nudes?” Mindy squeaks.

“When we were together, I let her take these pictures…she said no one would ever see them, but she wanted to practice. Something about composition and the juxtaposition of the male form…I mean, we were having sex, so I let her.” He looks sheepish. “And then she posted them all over school. I mean, all over. Father McCarthy saw them. My Calculus teacher saw them. I would say, a conservative estimate, probably a good three fourths of this Island has stared down the barrel of my urethra at one time or another.”

“Yikes.”

“Yikes is right. So, understandably, I get a little,” He clenches his fist, and his jaw, “Tense, when she’s around. Tense is the word.”

“You’re clearly totally over the whole thing,” Mindy teases. “I think that the best way to fight this is to show her what she’s missing.”

“She doesn’t want me, Mindy. And I don’t want her. Not anymore.”

“She doesn’t know she wants you because she hasn’t seen you with someone else. That’s how girls work.” Mindy pulls Danny up out of his chair, finding her own sense of pluck.  And maybe she isn't even interested in making Christina jealous, but in seeing what Danny will do to incite that envy.  She doesn't want to be one of Danny's strays; she wants him to be hers, just a little.

“This sounds exactly like the hatching of a cockamamie plan, Lahiri.” Danny sounds like he wants to be annoyed, but his expression betrays a bit of excitement.  "And I like it."

 


	7. String Theory

Mindy is partially, no, she’s completely certain that her new found bravery is due to whatever the hell Stevie put in that flask, but she doesn’t really care. If this is possibly her last night on earth, she’s going down swinging. Danny’s cute, and funny, and he looks at her in this way that other boys don’t really look at her. So what if he has a history? It makes him interesting, and kind of dangerous, and a little like a puppy that never really found a home. If that makes him coochie kryptonite, so be it. (Mindy does not have enough knowledge of Superman to know if this means his history repels him from girls or attracts them, but she is assuming Stevie meant it as the latter.) Mindy finagles her hand into Danny’s pocket, a move that he regards warmly, and removes the tiny silver bottle of liquor swiftly. He barely has time to complain that she’s just finished all of it when she pulls him into a throng of dancing teenagers.

He pulls her close, separating her legs with his own, and wrapping his arm around her waist. His hips move fluidly to the music, “Damn, Danny, you can dance. You’re like Kevin Bacon in _Footloose,_ but not nearly so weird looking.” Danny’s wordless response is to pull her closer, his hand sneaking down toward her ass. Mindy tries to remember to move her feet, to at least pretend to have rhythm, but she’s very distracted by the vigorous rubbing on her hindquarters. Due to her lack of concentration and basic dearth of coordination, she feels more like she is impeding Danny, rather than dancing with him.  

“Min, relax.” He says against her ear, swiping her hair back gently with his hand. All this time she thought being attracted to a guy meant wanting to talk to him, and learning what they might have in common, and now she’s discerning that talking is not at all what she wants to do with Danny. Nope, no, not even a little.

The music slows, and Danny takes her hand into his, and she’s able to rest her head against his shoulder and just kind of sway, which is a welcome shift. “You were holding out on me, Castellano. You’re a really good dancer.”

“So are you.” His breath is a mixture of beer and spearmint toothpaste.

“Please. I need a catapult and a taser to get into your league.” Mindy scoffs, and Danny smiles.

“I don’t care if you aren’t a great dancer, Mindy.” His torso is pressed up against hers, and she can feel the firmness of his chest and stomach against her curves. She doesn’t know why she’d imagined that he’d be softer, or less unyielding.

Danny catches her eye, and stares through her, his brown eyes glowing black, and hungry. _Laser beam sex eyes._ “Do you think it’s working?” Danny whispers, pulling Mindy out of her fugue state.

“Is what working?”  She wonders if her panties are actually physically melting off of her, and are visibly running down her leg.

“The dancing? Do you think she noticed?”

Mindy's heart sinks. Fucking Christina. She’s a first class moron for thinking that this boy would actually look at her the same way he’d look at that fucking ass model that broke his heart. She realizes that alcohol really fuels her ability to swear. “I don’t know, Danny, probably.” She is thankful for her buzz, and her predisposition to be a happy drunk. Otherwise, this would be torture. “Let’s go get another beer.”

Danny kisses her cheek as they part, and she wants to die a million, agonizing slow deaths right here on Charlie Lang’s Staten Island lawn, under the Chinese lanterns.

Mindy zigs when Danny zags and somehow they end up separated on the way to the cooler. She finds Suzanne, who has about six red hickeys trailing down her neck. “My God, Stevie did a number on you.”

Suzanne looks at her dazedly, clearly having had equal amounts of liquid encouragement. “Oh Christ, he is such an eighth grader about those vampire bites. He thinks it makes him look like he’s conquered me or some shit.”   She presses her lacquered nail against Mindy’s chest. “You two looked cozy out there. I think Danny is really starting to like you.”

Mindy shakes her head, “No, we’re just putting on a show for the fabled Christina. She’s Buttercup’s freaking twin sister and Danny is still super into her. I can’t compete with that.”

“You’re drunk if you think you can’t compete with that cardboard cut out of a cold hearted bitch.” Suzanne laughs. “Oops, on a scale of one to drunk, how ten do you think you are?” She and Mindy collapse in heaps of laughter, and Mindy has to race to the bathroom to avoid the stream of pee that is about to escape her bladder.

When she emerges, Suzanne has disappeared and Mindy spots Danny leaning against the deck railing, beer bottle dangling from his fingers, a cigarette in his other hand. He is glamorizing teen alcohol and tobacco use, and she has never wanted to drink and smoke more in her life.  She's never looked across a crowded party and seen someone this handsome, this naturally charismatic, and thought, _That's my date_.  But that's her date.  “Daniel, that is a terrible habit.” She crosses her arms.

“I can think of terrible-r.” He teases, grounding the cigarette out beneath his shoe. He’s giving her that look again, the one with campfires and and the stoked embers, the one that hones right in on all the parts of her that she’s never really thought about much, because no other boy had ever looked at her in quite the same way. Mindy leans in, about to kiss him, because she really feels like she has no other choice, because his smile is too magnificent not to, when she is propelled suddenly and forcefully to the left of her target.

“Jesus, Leotard, watch where you’re going. You almost knocked Mindy off the deck.” She can see the vein in Danny’s neck beginning to bulge.

“Whatever, Castell-lame-o.” The person named Leotard, a skinny but weirdly handsome kid with an odd choice of facial hair, whirls around to face Danny.  Mindy notices that it is Christina that Leotard is pulling behind him. Up close, Mindy takes in her full beauty, with her porcelain skin and deep aquamarine eyes. Christina gives Mindy a once over, as if she is mentally critiquing her fashion choices, harshly.  Mindy wants to punch her right in her exquisitely shaped mug. “Or should I call you Weiner Night?”

Mindy watches Danny carefully, as his jaw flexes, and his fist clenches. A curtain behind his eyes drops, nostrils flaring, and his face becomes utterly unrecognizable. Danny mutters a string of not quite discernible curse words and graphic depictions of Leotard’s mother that do not bear repeating, as he socks his opponent first in the stomach, and then directly in the groin. Christina tends to the crumpled and groaning Leotard, and Mindy isn’t sure how she should be reacting, so she stands, paralyzed.

 

Charlie appears out of the gathering mob, pushing his sleeves up and looking much more mature than those involved in the altercation, "You gotta go, Castellano. I can’t have the cops here on the last night I’m not a cop,”  Charlie firmly pushes Danny toward the front lawn, with Mindy following lamely behind. “Don’t get me wrong, that douche canoe deserves a widow maker like no one’s business, but…”

“I get it.” Danny’s breathing is ragged and quick, and Mindy knows that if she touched his chest, his heart beat would break through his sternum. “Sorry about the commotion, Charlie, really.  I just...I had to...”  

“Ain’t no party like a Staten party cuz a Staten party has crotch shots!” Stevie shouts out behind them, ruffling Danny’s hair. “Oh D, that was classic. I wish I had a camera on poor Paulie’s face! I think you just murdered his unborn children! I know his motility just decreased, at least fifty percent.”

“Shut up, Stevie.” Danny reaches out for Mindy, “Are you okay? Did he hurt you? He’s such a bag of dicks, that guy, just knocking into women like they aren’t there…” Mindy isn’t sure where this Danny had just disappeared to, or when he returned. “You okay?” His eyes search her face, looking for context clues. “Listen, I hope…I really didn’t want you to…” Danny turns to Stevie, “Hey, can we have a minute alone?”  Stevie nods and a slightly calmer Danny steers Mindy toward the mélange of parked cars, sitting down on the curb and motioning for her to sit next to him.

“Come ‘ere.”

Her flask of godknowswhat and her three beers are playing havoc with her head, and her stomach growls from lack of dinner. “Can we get something to eat soon?”

“Sure.” Danny wraps an arm around her shoulder, rubbing at the goose bumps that are forming on her upper arms. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

She shakes her head, “Can I ask you something though?”

“Shoot.”

“Did you punch Leotard…wait, what the hell kind of name is that, anyway?”

“Paul.” Danny interjects, helpfully.

“Did you punch Paul because he knocked into me or because he was with Christina?” She decides to leave out the Wiener Night bit for the betterment of Danny’s pride.

“I punched Paul because he disrespected you,” He smooths her hair back with the palm of his hand, so that it no longer covers her eye, “I did it because I could not _not_ punch him. I did it because I have poor impulse control and poorer judgment.” His lips turn up, and poor impulse control has never sounded like more of a good idea. “It was stupid, and I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t do it because he was with Christina. That was just coincidental.”

She tends to believe him, even though she probably shouldn't. "Are you still in love with Christina?"

Danny screws up his face into something that looks pained.  "No." 

"Why does it look like it hurt you to say that?"

"Are we playing 20 questions right now, Lahiri?" Danny doesn't look as annoyed as he sounds.  "It didn't hurt me to say that.  I am not in love with Christina.  She fucked me over six ways from Tuesday.  I am a lot of things, but I am not a masochist."

It still seems like he's telling the truth, and it makes her more nervous than if he was lying, “Is it true what Suzanne said about you?”

“Which part?” He raises an eyebrow.

“She said that I shouldn’t get attached, because this is what you do. You pick up strays.”

“I have to talk to those two about what they tell people about me.” Danny sighs and stretches his legs out in front of himself, but doesn’t loosen his grip on her shoulder. “What makes you think you’re a stray, Mindy?”

“I followed you home, for one.”

He purses his lips, “Okay, you’ve got me there, but you can’t...I told you, I made a resolution."  

"You were going to make friends.  And I'm your new friend."  

"And I'm going to leave the past in the past, right?  Christina, she's in the past.  Ancient history.  She's the Macedonians and we're the New Deal, capisce?"  Danny smiles broadly, helping Mindy off the street, with the intention of leading her back to Stevie's car.  "Let's go get you something to eat."

Mindy collects her limbs and attempts to propel them forward, but the alcohol has made her motor skills deteriorate into those of a toddler.  When she sways, Danny catches her against him, her face inches from his; his eyelashes brush her cheekbone and she shivers.  "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to get into my pants, Castellano." 

"If I was, would you hold it against me?"  His voice is low, and even though that is a well worn pick up line, it gives her a jolt.  He's smoldering again.  Damnit.  

"My boobs are plural, Danny."  She has no idea what's she's saying anymore, only that his face is out of focus, and she's grateful, because otherwise she thinks she might not have the courage that she needs to move her lips closer to his.

From her long time love of science, Mindy understands synapses and endorphins and pheromones, and she can balance the hell out of a chemical equation; but this, this is biology and chemistry and psychology and a little bit of string theory that rolls up and shapes itself into two pairs of  lips, pressing against each other.  It is a pair of warm hands searching over her curves and under her shirt, Danny's tongue hungrily exploring her mouth, and the little moan that escapes her lips as all of those things combine.  Kissing Danny is exhilarating and frightening and altogether mind-blowing, and it's happening all because she sat on the right bench in the right Dean's office.  His lips are soft, and they taste like sugar, which is odd because he's been drinking beer, but she doesn't want to think about that.  She doesn't want to think about anything except the next few minutes, and his body against hers, and his lips, sweet Jesus, his lips.  

It takes her a few seconds to register that Danny is talking to her, and a few more to realize that he's saying specific words, "Are you...vibrating?"

She nods, her eyes wide, of course she's vibrating, she wants him to touch every---"Oh shit, my phone."

_Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit._


	8. Paper Danny

“I can’t go back now, Danny. It’s just…we just started.”

Danny stares at the buzzing phone, and the picture of Mindy’s mother that appears when she calls. “She looks nice.”

“That’s her frozen persona. The one calling is much, much angrier.”

Danny holds the phone out to her, “Talk to your mother, Mindy.”

“And tell her what? I’m drunk on Staten Island and making out with a stranger?” He winces, and Mindy regrets her choice of words immediately. “I can’t answer that phone, Danny.”

“Are you afraid of getting in trouble? Cause that ship has sailed, sister.” The buzzing stops and the picture of her mother disappears. _Three missed calls_. “Just call her back.”

“I can’t get back on that ferry.”

“We have a bridge, too, and cabs. I’ll put you in a cab…you’ll only be about two hours late for curfew. That’s not the worst thing in the world.”

No, Danny, the worst thing in the world is kissing you for five minutes, or ten, (time really didn’t mean much when she kissing him) and then never kissing you again. “She’ll kill me if I’m two hours late or if I’m ten, so…”

Danny's eyes light up.  "Mrs. Tangredi is staying at her boyfriend's tonight, so Stevie said we can all crash there.  No funny business, I promise."  He holds his hands up as if she's pointing a gun at him.  "We'll send you back to the City sober, first thing in the morning."

She knows it is a terrible decision, chock full of poor judgement and poorer impulse control, but there he is, and he seems so hopeful all of a sudden.  "Do the Tangredi's have Oreos?  Because I am really craving an Oreo right now."

++++++

She scarfs down Oreos and milk like a third grader at snack time as Danny watches her in a mixture of admiration and horror.  He catches her by the waist in the kitchen and kisses her softly on the mouth, just barely brushing his lips against hers.  "You taste like Oreo cookies and promises."  She can feel his words all the way to the tips of her toes.

Stevie and Suzanne excuse themselves for what Stevie refers to as "the bouncy bouncy" and Mindy follows Danny back down to his bedroom. She surveys his bookshelf for evidence that he's a murderer, but finds none.  Just _Catcher in the Rye_ , and his school text books neatly lined up.  

The straps on the shoes that Suzanne loaned her are a puzzle and she almost crashes into Danny as she struggles to remove them. “Here, let me. You’re like an upside down ladybug.” Danny gently takes her foot into his hand and frees it from its strappy bondage. He deftly releases the strap on the second shoe, skimming his hand over her ankle and up to her calf.  Mindy’s head may be swimming with alcohol and lack of proper dinner but she immediately recognizes his move as the sexiest thing that has ever happened to her in her life, and kind of the most romantic, too.

Danny has already handed her a t-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts to wear as pajamas, and she wonders if he only picks up girls that fit into his s/medium clothes. She sways into the bathroom adjacent to Danny’s room and relieves herself of an evening of inebriation. 

Mindy strips down to her underwear, and pulls Danny’s t-shirt over her head. Her buzz is starting to wear off, and is swiftly being overtaken by a throbbing pain as a headache develops.

Danny is already lying in his bed, the covers up to his rib cage. He isn’t wearing a shirt. He’s laid out a blanket and pillow on the opposite side of his, “I thought we could lay head to toe, if it’s weird for you.”

Oh, it’s super weird for me, Mindy thinks, but resists saying aloud. “Good idea.” She’s already made out with him, she knows what his lips feel like against her skin, what his tongue does when it finds hers…sleeping next to each other should not be weird. She’s already on the lam, why not break all the rules? Mindy hunkers down on the twin bed, propping herself up on her elbow, her feet not quite reaching Danny’s shoulders.

“Today was…it was like a hundred Taylor Swift songs rolled into one.”

Danny laughs. “Is that a good or a bad thing?”

“Good.” She squeezes his foot through the blanket. “So good.”  The only light in the room is from an Exit sign that Stevie had earlier bragged about stealing from the local movie theater before it was torn down. “That thing is so bright.”

“That fucking Exit sign gives me existential angst all night, every night.” Danny laments and Mindy marvels at his ability to be obtuse even when exhausted and drunk.

“Other people’s houses smell weird.” She announces, apropos of nothing.

Danny props himself up on his elbow, reaching down with his other hand to pat her knee. “Huh?”

“I was just thinking, what would be the worst part for me, if I had to live in a new place every few months. And I think it would be how everyone’s house has a smell, but you don’t really know what the smell is when you’re living in it, but sometimes, when you come in from outside, it like, hits you, and you’re all “that’s not the smell I thought it was!” And your friends houses, they have distinct scents. Like Gwen’s house always smells like vanilla, but Alex’s kind of smells like a Greek salad. You just never know what you’re gonna get.”

His face is shaded in the moonlight, but she can see traces of bemusement cross his features. “You’re a little nutjub, aren’t you?”

“That’s offensive, Danny.” Even though her buzz is slowly dissipating, she still has that warm feeling in her mid-section, and Danny’s smile only intensifies it. “I just say what I’m thinking.”

“I know.” He leaves his hand on her leg and she can’t help but glance down at it. 

“You’ve been really sweet to me tonight, Danny. Thanks.” She smiles, “But I don’t understand how you can get so angry, so quickly. I mean, I get it, it’s your lot in life, but you really went after that Paul guy tonight. I mean, like, you could have murdered him with your bare hands. Your eyes,” She shivers thinking about how the eyes that looked at her so warmly went so blank, so expressionless, like he was no longer inhabiting his own body anymore. “They were freaking spooky. I know I don’t know you, but, I really didn’t know you.”

Danny grabs for her hand, lacing their fingers together. “I still have to work on that, I know.” He shrugs, “I always fought so I could feel something. Anything. I’m figuring out that I can feel other stuff, too.” His lips curl into a smile, but his eyes play traitor. “The first thing you learn to do when your life turns to shit is to turn everything the fuck off.”

Mindy contemplates him for a moment, and admires the contrast between their respective fingers, “With everything that’s happened to you, how’d you get this far?”

“Like, how am I not a drooling vegetable in a jail cell somewhere?”

“I guess. But not exactly the words I would have chosen.”

“You know what I’m good at?”

“Besides luring strange girls onto boats?”

“Besides luring _pretty_ girls onto boats.” He amends. “I’ve always been good at school. Dancing and school. Luring girls, dancing, and school. Geez, I have a lot more marketable skills than I originally thought.” He picks at his wrist, not meeting her eyes. “Even when everything was absolutely bonkers, I could still pull straight As. I was in control there, you know?” He drops her hand, suddenly, and climbs out of bed. As his weight shifts, she almost rolls onto the floor.

Danny paws through his garbage bags, ahem, his luggage, and finds a folder full of official looking documentation. He pages through and holds up a stapled set of paperwork. “Want to see all that ails me?”

“What?” Mindy reaches for what looks like a term paper, until she reads the first paragraph.

> _Daniel Castellano is a fifteen year old Caucasian male of Italian-American origin, of below average height and slim build, referred today by his Child Protective Services worker for an assessment to determine the most accurate diagnosis and placement of Mr. Castellano, henceforth referred to as, “client.” Client recently disrupted from his most recent foster home placement (historically, his twelfth) after an altercation with his foster father occurred after a home visit to biological mother. Client reported that foster father referred to his biological mother as “trash” and Client indicates that he does not feel remorse for punching his caregiver in the nose and mouth, repeatedly. Client indicates that he has moved foster placements at least once every two to three months for the past several years. He does not have insight into the reasons for these moves._

“I think I might be most offended by the below average height crack. I can’t help I was a late bloomer.” Danny jokes, clearly sensing that Mindy looks absolutely aghast by what she is holding.

> _Client is currently placed with his five year old brother, with whom previous caregivers and social workers report that client has a strong bond. Previous assessments indicate that Client places the care of his brother above his own and he has been identified as taking on the parent role in the family. Client reports that his biological father abandoned the family when client was ten, after the birth of his brother. He reports that his mother was unable to care for the family due to her own mental health and financial concerns, and the siblings moved into their grandparent’s home. Grandmother became ill with late stage ovarian cancer several months later, and passed away within several weeks of diagnosis. Grandfather died of a coronary several months after that. The children were then placed into foster care._

“I told you it was a whole thing.” His veneer is cracking somewhat, and Mindy can see the little boy that lost all of these people, in such quick succession. She isn’t sure how he’s sitting there now, just being. She isn’t sure how she would be, if half the things in this paragraph had happened to her.

> C _ase workers report that client is often defiant, unruly, and has difficulty expressing feelings. Client lacks insight into his behavior and refuses to participate in therapy services as offered. Client denies feeling sad or depressed, but endorses feelings of irritability, hostility, and being easily annoyed. He is often described as "mouthy" and disrespectful of authority figures, especially males. Socially, he reports difficulty developing relationships with others, although he cites having one close friend from Staten Island, where he grew up exclusively until the age of 10. He indicates that he is interested in dating girls, but often finds himself bored and disinterested after the initial exploration stage._

“I think they’re trying to say I enjoy the chase.”

She looks up at him, over her glasses. “Danny,”

> _Client has longstanding history of legal issues, beginning with charges such as assault, theft, petty larceny, shoplifting, and resisting arrest. He was placed in a residential program called One Way Farm at the age of 14, after being charged with his first felony offense. He completed the program successfully, but is currently awaiting adjudication on his most recent assault charges for the incident involving his foster father._

She doesn’t want to turn the page. “Danny. This is a piece of paper, Danny, this isn’t who you are.” She says his name more than once, because she hates that she’s just read his life summed up into a few paragraphs, and none of them called him by his name.

“It’s who I was.”

She crawls up the bed, so that she is half into his lap, and drops the report onto the floor. “It wasn’t ever you. It’s just a way…it’s just a way to distill information.”  He is warm, and his bits of chest hair tickle her exposed skin. “But you decided that you weren’t this piece of paper anymore, at some point, right?” She kisses his shoulder.

He shrugs, “I woke up one morning and decided that I couldn’t live in those paragraphs for the rest of my life. I made more mistakes, sure, but…I knew I had to get out of here. I mean, I still worry about Richie all the time, but I know they’re taking care of him, and I can see him whenever I want…” His voice dips, and he’s staring out into the dark room like he can see Richie playing somewhere off in the distance. “I had to make school my number one. And it came easiest to me.”

Mindy relaxes fully into him, curling around his thin, but muscular frame. He traces tiny shapes onto her bare shoulder, grazing the top of her head with his lips. “I hope we can both get into Columbia.”

“Come on, an Asian and a kid from the foster care system? If we can’t get in, who can?”

The battery in her phone has long since died, probably committing suicide from the number of angry voice mails her mother had left, but she reflexively looks at it to tell the time. “It’s late, Danny.”

“You just looked at a blank screen, Mindy. But yeah, it’s late.” He has tiny moles on his neck, and she can count them in the light from the _Exit_ sign.  

"How come the _Exit_ sign gives you angst?"

He looks down at her, kissing her forehead, and then her nose.  "Cause I have to get off of Staten Island, and it reminds me everyday."  He grimaces, "Not to mention, I don't know a single person who hasn't taken advantage of that sign in one way or another."

"I won't."

"You will.  Tomorrow morning."  Danny cocks his head, "But it's okay.  We'll figure it out."  She can tell something corny is coming, because he gets this look on his face, like her grandpa before he tells an off color joke at Diwali, "In the words of the poet Mick Jagger, you can't always get what you want, but you just might find, you get what you need."

She groans, but kisses him anyway.  She can't fall asleep, not this close to someone that makes her vibrate at this high of a frequency, but she gets as close as she can, taking in as much of Danny as possible, before she has to return to her mother's disapproving eye, and her regular boring, Danny-less life.


	9. Bells and Whistles

Mindy’s mother refuses to speak to her, or even look at her, as they ride the train back to Boston. Mindy isn’t sure what is worse; her silence or the anticipation of her non-silence. Mindy sits on the aisle seat, clutching a crumpled sweatshirt, the navy one with white block letters that spell _Castellano_ on the back.

Danny had pressed it into her hands as he was loading her into the cab in the pre-dawn light, his bed-head making him look impossibly and adorably vulnerable. That night, Mindy hadn’t slept, she couldn’t possibly, and she and Danny had talked and talked, sharing stories and worries and embarrassing moments, plus she forced him to play _Screw, Marry, Kill_ , completely against his will. Danny had wrapped his hand around her kneecap, his arm along her femur and up her hipbone, her head tucked into the crook of his neck. She couldn’t remember ever laughing harder, and she had no idea what was so funny. Danny had answered his twentieth Would You Rather? around four a.m., and though Mindy was still raring to go, Danny’s eyelids could not compete with his internal body clock. She’d admired his eyelashes as they grazed the orbits of his cheekbones, and thought about how twenty four hours earlier, she hadn’t even known he existed. And at 4 a.m., early on a Sunday morning, it suddenly felt as if he was the only thing she ever knew existed.

Danny had slipped into the first stages of sleep, his lips gently parted, and his face completely free of guile. She had wished fervently that her phone’s battery hadn’t gone dead so that she could have taken a picture; he looked so sweet, and he was so, so close. None of her friends would ever believe her. She didn’t know if she’d believe herself, not without photographic evidence. Not without some kind of proof that this whole day and night hadn’t been just a fever dream, or an auditory and visual hallucination. Everything about the day had been completely outside of her comfort zone, her rational thought processes, and her general personality traits. If she had been truly honest with herself, as she watched Danny sleep, with the only light coming from a sign that she knew she had to eventually obey, their day together had been outside of everything; everything but her absolute and infinite belief in the magic of romance, and the possibilities of what could lie ahead.

And now her proof, the physical manifestation of her one act of teenage rebellion (besides the scowl on her mother’s face and the promise that _we will discuss this matter when we get home_ ) is a well worn sweater with his name branded across the back. His sweater, that smells like soothing fabric softener, and a little bit of his woodsy aftershave. (Not to mention, when she was changing back into her pre-vomit clothes, she also located a tiny hickey on her collarbone that she thinks she may have tattooed there to live on in perpetuity.)

Mindy and her mother arrive back at their bright and cheerful suburban home, and Mindy immediately recognizes its scent as belonging to her family. It’s a little bit of cinnamon, mixed with the fresh flowers that her father brings in weekly for her mother from the garden that Mindy helps him plant. She’s inhaling deeply, thinking about how Danny never really gets to smell home, when her mother erupts into a diatribe of all the horrible things that she’d thought had happened to Mindy.

She starts off somewhat calmly, outlining how dangerous and stupid and inconsiderate Mindy’s actions have been. She details her hurt and her worry and her disappointment, and how does Mindy expect to be allowed to attend proms and class trips and college if she can’t be trusted to attend an interview without following home the first boy she sees? Mindy can only think about how Danny wrote her number on his arm with a Sharpie pen that he found in the Tangredi’s kitchen, and promised to call. She hopes he’ll call.

Her mother’s anger begins to ramp up as she lectures, and paces, and worries about how she’ll tell Mindy’s father. Mindy stares straight ahead, nodding, because what else can she say? She’d rather think about how Danny had kissed her on the nose, and then the mouth, even though she was concerned about morning breath, and he kind of lingered near her lips afterward. He’d taken her face into his hands, cupping it gently and pulling her toward him, one of those moves that she’d seen in movies and television shows, but had never experienced in real life. In real life, it was So. Much. Better. Better than she’d ever imagined. Even if she didn’t get accepted into Columbia, even if he never called, she still had that kiss. She could close her eyes at any time and imagine that kiss.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself, Mindy?” Her mother looks expectant, and perturbed, and definitely the sternest that she’s ever looked.

“I’m sorry.” Mindy hugs the sweater, and her mother finally notices what she’s been holding.

“You knew him for one day, Mindy. One. You knew him for less than ten minutes when you risked life and limb to follow him blindly…I know that we have taught you better than to lie to us?"  Mindy fingers the fabric of the sweater, searching for the words, “Tell me what made you act this way. What compelled you to be so reckless?”

“I don’t know.” Mindy can’t stop the tears from cascading down her face, and her breath comes in waves and gasps. “I wasn’t even in my own body anymore, I just kept doing things because…” _Because they felt good and right_ , “I just kept doing things that I knew were not…I knew it was wrong. Please don’t hate me for this. Please.”

Her mother’s face softens, “Mindy, never.” She sits beside her, and hugs Mindy to her, and Mindy weeps in her lap for what seems like hours. She confesses everything to her mother, from their first conversation in Dean Speck’s office, to the vomitous ferry, to the Laundromat and the party. She reveals all of Danny’s history; the collateral damage, and his broken life that he’s put back together because he needs to and he wants to; how he was so sweet and kind and chivalrous and careful.

Mrs. Lahiri sighs, taking Mindy’s hands into hers, “You cannot un-break what has been broken, Mindy. He is not a project or an experiment for you to undertake, he is still just a boy.”

Logically, she knows that most likely nothing will come of her night spent with Danny; that time and distance and the very nature of Danny’s transient life up until this point dictate the slimness of the possibility that they’ll meet again in the fall, or even that he will call. Logically, schmogically. She has his sweater, and it bears his name, and she’ll wear it every day until he uses that phone number she scrawled on his arm and call her.

_He didn’t call._

 

The fat, acceptance envelope arrives from Columbia University right around the time that she finally convinces herself that going to Dartmouth is probably a better option, and around the time that she stops having heart palpitations every time the phone rings. She even swears she will stop sleeping with Danny’s sweatshirt under her pillow (after a few weeks of wearing it day in and day out, people were starting to make catty comments, and it had already stopped smelling like him); okay, fine, no more than three times a week. And even though she’s grounded until the summer, her parents agree to allow her to attend prom, and Gwen and Alex assist her in enlisting Peter Prentice as her date.

It isn’t more than a few hours after the mail man deposits her letter in the mailbox that her cell phone buzzes with a text from the 718 area code.

_**I got the bells and whistles phone plan.** _

**_Who is this?_ **

_**Who is this? This is Dan.** _

And a picture of Danny, dressed in what must be his school uniform, a white button down shirt and navy blue nubby tie, in front of the Statue of Liberty, appears on her phone screen.

She feels her heart leap at the sight of his hair, ruffled from the wind, and his crinkly eyed lopsided sheepish grin.

**_I never got to show you her Majesty. You were all green and squirrelly at the time._ **

**_I_ _still want to see it, up close._**

**_That’s what she said._ **

**_(Groan.)…Danny, why did you wait so long to call me?_ **

A few minutes pass before he responds, **_Honestly?_**

**_No, lie to me._ **

**_Old habits are hard to break, Mindy. Are you mad at me?_ **

**_I’m not not mad at you._ **

**_How can I make it up to you?_ **

_**Don’t do it again.** _

**_Deal. Can I call you? I hate this texting business. Data rates are highway robbery._ **

Her heart beats faster. And her phone begins to ring.


	10. Landline

“Danny, quick: How many actual people do you know named Walnuts?”

“What?” Voices raise in the background and she guess that he must be at the hotel, on his shift as a bell boy. He likes to hang out in the kitchen between calls, sneaking room service plates.

“Gwen and I have a bet. How many people do you personally know that are called Walnuts?”

Danny half groans, half sighs, “Three.”

“Ha! I win!” She pauses, “How about Bananas?”

She can almost hear his smile, in spite of himself, “Two,” He takes a few beats, “I promise I’ll call you after work, okay?”

Mindy finds herself calling Danny at least a few times a day, and texting more than that, even though he absolutely hates it. He finds texting more intrusive than a body cavity search and she has no idea why. “Why must you be so Italian about everything?” She’d asked him, late one night, after having spent hours on the phone with him while they watched a documentary together on PBS. She loves that she can call him, out of the blue, without feeling like it’s an event, or a whole thing she has to work herself up to. Calling Danny is like calling Gwen, or Alex, or like breathing. She does it because it’s natural, plus she isn’t sure she could live without it.

* * *

 

 

 

“So you guys are friends then?” Gwen asks over a plate of French fries, holding one over her upper lip. “I mustache you if that is the best idea.”

Mindy groans, “This is why we don’t have nice things, Gwen.” She grabs the fry and pops it into her own mouth. “I think it’s a fantastic idea.”

“But you’re not dating?” Alex raises an eyebrow. “I’ve seen the pictures of him, Mindy, you gotta hit that.”

“We’re friends. I mean, there are benefits, I mean, there were benefits, but he lives in Staten Island. And we don’t want to be tied down when we get to school.” She doesn’t want to admit that she would kill for it to be a romantic relationship, that she would actually take the life of a hobo or a drifter if it meant that Danny Stands Too Close Castellano would be her boyfriend. Yesterday, he sent her an emoji of a heart (granted, he was describing his mother’s gravy) and she thought she might lose her ever loving mind. One day, she’d convince him that she was the sauce that he craved (it sounded better in her head). But she couldn’t say that out loud (especially not the sauce thing), because then if it didn’t happen, it wouldn’t be soul-crushing. It would just be mildly devastating, like how waiting 27 days for him to call had been.

“You need to get in dem pants, Minderella.”

“Gross.” Nope, she’s seen in dem pants, and it is not gross at all. Not that she’d have any idea what to do if she did, in fact, succeed in that endeavor, but from everything she’d seen and heard, it seemed like figuring it out was part of the fun.

* * *

 

 “I don’t know why you expect everything to be a damn fairy tale all the time. That isn’t how life works.” He sounds angry, angrier than usual.

Mindy’s getting used to Danny’s old man rants, his feelings on the Mets pitching choices, railing against the decisions of anyone that he knew that made any kind of decision he didn’t agree with, or the importance of calisthenic exercise in physical education (“What is this yoga bullshit? Namaste, you goofy sonuvabitch.”)

But tonight, this is different. He’s edgier, bordering on mean.

“I don’t expect it to be a fairy tale. But I want to live my life expecting more than just the minimum. How is that bad?”

“Because you will always get disappointed, Min. Why do you want to live your life always feeling like stuff doesn’t live up to your expectations?”

Mindy stretches out across her bed on her stomach, tracing designs on her duvet cover with her finger, “I don’t want to miss out on having the things that I want, Danny. I don’t want to pretend that I want Payless when I can have Jimmy Choo.”

“Jesus, you’re shallow.”

Mindy’s mouth gapes open, even though he can’t see her expression, and the phone is getting hot against her cheek, “You take that back, Danny Castellano. Take that back right this second.”

He doesn't respond.

"That was rude, Danny.  I'm not shallow, I just want things the way that I want them."

She wishes that she could see his face.  If he's stricken by his own reaction, or smug.  Then she'll know if she needs to verbally bitch slap him or not.  Usually if they disagree, they have a way of working it out without either of them taking it personally.  She calls it their short hand.  But tonight, she feels like they aren't speaking even a little bit of the same language.

He takes a sharp breath, and she thinks he'll finally apologize.  “Listen, I gotta go.” And the line goes dead.

For the second time in her life, Mindy cries herself to sleep.

_**I’m sorry.** _

**_*crickets*_ **

_**Mindy, I’m sorry.** _

_**You were mean**_.

_**I told you I’m sorry.** _

_**Do you take back what you said?** _

_**I don’t think that you’re shallow, Min. Can I call you?** _

She loves when he calls her Min. No one has ever called her that, and when he says it, it sounds like their special code, even though it’s just an easy way to abbreviate her name. Min. Dan. It makes them familiar.

_**Are you going to be mean?** _

_**Are you?** _

_**Are you?** _

_**Min.** _

Silence crackles over the line, as if he is contemplating hanging up, even though he’s just called, and Danny’s voice comes as a surprise, small and disembodied, “Richie’s moving back in with my mom.”

“That’s great, Danny!” Mindy says brightly. “Wait, why do you sound like that is not great?” She wishes she read social and context cues better sometimes, “Oh… Danny.” She says his name like an apology.

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?” He makes a raspberry “pfft” sound over the line. “I’m a little riled up, I’m not gonna lie to you.”

“Are you worried about him?” Mindy knows how much Richie means to Danny, how he would stone cold flatten someone who tried to hurt Richie, how much Danny’s given up already to make Richie’s life better, less effected by his parents inability to care for them.

“Always.” At least he’s honest.

“Are you jealous?”

Mindy imagines the look of annoyance on Danny’s face, because he insists that jealousy is not an emotion that he feels, “A little.”

“I was about to watch _Say Anything_ on cable. Do you want to stay on the phone and watch with me?”  She knows Danny well enough, now, that she knows that he doesn’t want to be alone right now.

“I’d like that.”  He hates watching her movies, but they’ve done this a few times now, much to the chagrin of Danny’s minute plan. She likes to hear Danny’s incredulous responses to the rom-com tropes. It makes her feel like everything is new again. “Does this one at least have some shooting?”

“No, Danny, Lloyd Dobbler does not go on any murder sprees. Spoiler alert: there is some mild white collar crime, however.”

“I’ll take it.” They are both quiet for a minute, while Mindy settles into her bed and Danny finds the channel.

“I’m glad you called me, Danny.”

“Me too.”

Danny starts to snore somewhere around the time Diane Court’s dad gets found embezzling. Mindy's proud of him for lasting that long.

* * *

 

She shares her Netflix password with him, and they have a mini- Cameron Crowe movie marathon. Danny seems to dig _Singles_ , probably because the music is old, and he tells her that she’s like the Bridget Fonda character.  Danny likes _Almost Famous_ a lot, and cannot stop texting " ** _I am a_** _**golden god**_ ," for days afterward.  They both fall asleep during _Elizabethtown_. Even Orlando Bloom couldn’t save that one.

* * *

 

 

“I like how you always name my feelings and I just agree or disagree with them. I wish I could have had you around when I was growing up. People would have been so much less frustrated with me. I could have blown like 40 percent fewer placements.”

“I think we both know that I am vital to your existence, Danny.” She teases him, filling with pride that he actually likes something that she’s doing.

“We do.” He agrees, and he actually sounds serious. “You got any big plans for the weekend?”

“Absolutely! Prom. It’s only the biggest night of a girl’s life in high school, outside of losing her virginity and being named Homecoming Queen.” She realizes that of all the hours that they’ve spent on the phone over the last few weeks, she hasn’t mentioned all her planning for the dance. She isn’t sure why, but maybe because she knows that it is a weird line, between Danny and herself, and having a prom date might actually cross it.

“Oh yeah, prom.” He tries to sound casual, and maybe a little breezy.  It comes off like he's squeezing the words out through his teeth.  "Who is your date again?"

"Peter.  I think I mentioned him before?  The one..."

"The fratty one?  The brosky?  Yeah, he sounds like a nightmare.  I hope you want to do keg stands."

"Okaaaaaay."  She draws out the word, somehow out of protection.  "What is wrong with you right now?"

"Nothing is wrong with me.  I'm not going to the prom with Van Wilder."

"You just made a movie reference!"

"This isn't the time, Mindy."  His voice is tired, as if she's exhausted him since he called.  He'd been so cheerful lately, up until tonight.  He picked up some extra shifts at the hotel, and had some extra money coming in, and was going to look at buying a car; well, after he learned how to drive.  He told her the night before that he felt like he could finally be free.  "Listen, I think maybe....maybe this isn't the best idea for us."

Her heart seizes in her chest.  "What?  What are you saying?"

"Maybe I should just stop calling you all the time.  And you should stop texting me.  I thought...I don't know what I thought."

"Do you need me to name your emotions right now so you can agree with something?"

"No, I got this one."  He's doing that thing, that thing where he turns everything off.  He warned her.  "I'm going to leave you alone." He doesn't even have a trace of emotion in his tone. 

Nothing about this is correct, or just, or believable to her.  "It's incredible how easy it is for you just to walk away, Danny." 

"It's incredible how easy it is for you to just go to Prom with some guy and not mention it until a few days before."

"Danny, it wasn’t that long ago that you were trying to make Christina jealous. I’m not the only one who has other irons in the fire."

"I wasn’t ever trying to make Christina jealous."

"What are you talking about?"

"You said you wanted to make Christina jealous and I let you. I just wanted to benefit from whatever making Christina jealous ended up looking like. Sue me, I’m a guy."

"You’re not just a guy, Danny."

"I am. And right now, I’m a guy who is going to hang up the phone."

"Why?" She feels the anger bubbling in her chest, and the finality of his statement sending a cold chill down her neck and back.

"Because."

"That isn’t a reason."

"Because I don’t know if I can be friends with you, Mindy."

"Because I’m going to prom with Peter?"

"Because a lot of things. I told you before, old habits are hard to break."  His tone is still flat, and she feels like she did on the boat.  She doesn't know him at all.  All the things she thought she knew, all the words and the kisses, and the way his hands felt on her body, she didn't understand him any better than that first day on the ferry.  And she feels a little nauseous.  _He's leaving.  He's leaving.  Please don't leave._

"I think you're making a mistake, Danny."

"Oh, I know I am, kid.  But I still have to do it."  Now his edges are hard, pointed, jagged.  
"Why?"  Her voice rises, bordering on what her mother refers to as howler monkey levels.

"I'm sorry, Min." 

"Daniel Middle Name Optional Castellano, if you hang up this phone, I will never---" She doesn't know how she wants to finish that sentence, but it's no matter.

The dial tone is deafening.

 


	11. Every Thug Needs a Lady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sea Wolf--But I hope you have the strength to shake us free,  
> Shake us free boy, shake us free my son, you better shake us free.--I Made A Resolution

_What the actual fuck, Danny._

She stuffs the sweatshirt in the back of her closet, behind her old saxophone, and underneath her box of camp memorabilia and playbills from the theater. She’s not going to trip herself up by sleeping with that thing, with Danny’s memories seeping by osmosis into her dreams. It’s hard enough not to think about him while she’s trying to study or dial his number when she wants to complain about something, and it’s only been a few days. She can’t bear to delete the photos that he’s messaged her; the first one with the Statue of Liberty, another with his precious, curly haired eight year old brother at a Mets game. Danny was grinning so broadly, like he was in his favorite place, with his favorite person, Richie. There’s a third, too, that Suzanne took, surreptitiously at Lang’s party, of Danny and Mindy sitting in their lawn chairs, hatching a cockamamie plan, and Mindy swears she can see their heart eyes blazing off the tiny screen. She physically aches when she accidentally swipes by those images, but the pain isn’t enough for her to remove them. It’s actually because of the pain that she allows (no, needs) them to remain.

Her mother is sympathetic, but not all that helpful. “He is young, Mindy, as are you. He doesn’t know what he wants, only that he is not ready for whatever it is that you two had. There will be other boys. Boys that do not have such a past; other boys that will not be so complicated.”

Mindy huffs away,  eating a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream, because chocolate and marshmallows haven't let her down.  Plus, she's sort of stopped caring that she has a prom dress she needs to fit into on Saturday night.

Gwen, Maggie, and Alex have endured their own break-up situations, in varying degrees, and even though Mindy and Danny were never dating, it feels very much like a break up. “I feel like you’re saying that he ditched you because he was worried that he liked you. Which is, like, the opposite of how these things work.” Gwen contemplates her plate of salad. Mindy wants to stab her with her fork.

“Oh, I’ve already noted the irony.” _He wants me so much that he doesn’t want me at all._

“I’m going to need you to take a hard look at your life choices right now. Why are you pining after a guy who changes his mind like the wind? I know he’s hot, and he’s mysterious, and he has that thing that girls love, because he’s a little damaged and a little dangerous…” Maggie drifts off for a moment, and Mindy takes her opportunity to speak up.

“I don’t hear anything in those sentences that indicate why I should not be upset right now.”

“Be as upset as you want, Mindy, but listen, sister, Danny Castellano is not the last man on earth. He was just the last one on your phone.” Alex pounds the cafeteria table for emphasis. “Just be glad you guys didn’t *brown chicken brown cow*.” She rushes the last four words together in a sing-songy tone. “That could have been disaster.”

Mindy imagines that sex with Danny would have been the opposite of a disaster, just because she knows how perfect his lips are, and how gently he’d brush her hair out of her face, and the way he had said her name like a prayer. No, Alex is wrong. “No, it wouldn’t have been. It would have been magnificent, and I would have been a revelation; but now I’ll never know, because he is a coward, and I am an idiot.”

“So exact some poignant psychic revenge on him, and rebound with Peter at Prom.” Gwen pops a cherry tomato into her mouth. Mindy glares.

_None of this is helping._

 

After school, in a moment (oh, who is she kidding? A lifetime) of weakness, she dials Danny’s number. It rings and rings, and goes to his voice mail. When she hears his Staten Island accent, all gravelly and deep, she panics and hangs up the phone.  She experiences a strange amalgamation of terror and longing as she presses 'redial', just to listen to Danny recite his outgoing message.   He might already be exacting his own form of psychic revenge, for as tight as her chest feels, and as heavy her heart.

* * *

 

She’s reading a magazine and waiting for her nails to dry when the door bell rings. It’s way too early to be Peter, and she is still in her yoga pants and worn out debate team t-shirt. Her parents are out at an art gallery for the afternoon, so her house is quiet except for the Katy Perry that Mindy is blaring on her Ipod speakers.

She gasps aloud when she sees a contrite looking Danny standing on the porch, a garment bag slung over his arm, “Hey, Min.”

She looks around her front yard, as if a camera crew is lurking behind their azaleas. Despite the pounding of her heart, and the paralyzing nature of her shock, she maintains a defensive stance, her arms crossed over her chest. “Don’t you ‘Hey Min’ me.” She's actually surprised to hear her own voice and she twitches imperceptibly.  

“Sorry,” He bows, “Hello, Mindy,” as if formality is the issue.

She can’t believe that he’s at her house, in her doorway, leaning. _How dare he_.  He seems taller. “Did you get taller? What are you doing here?”

He ignores the first question, because it is ridiculous, and gives her his thousand watt smile, albeit tentatively. “I was just nowhere near your neighborhood.”

Upon further review, he is slightly sweaty and mostly wild-eyed,  "Did you run here from Staten?” He looks like he just got a fresh hair cut, and little droplets of perspiration bead on his forehead and near his impossibly tiny ears.

“Of course not, I took a bus. Multiple buses, actually. ‘Cuz I was thinking about it, and I thought you needed a proper date to the prom. Not just some dude.”

“Peter is Mr. Prom, Danny, not some dude.”

“I don’t care. Mr. Prom isn’t a thing. And Peter’s not me.” He’s taking up the entire door frame now, and he hasn’t asked to be let in. _This is a metaphor_ , Mindy realizes.

“Prom was last night, anyway.”

“What!?!?””

“I’m kidding, it’s tonight.” She shouldn’t be this mean to him; he just spent God knows how long riding a bus up the turnpike, because he clearly wanted to see her. Not only to see her, but make a grand gesture that she didn’t even know he was capable of. But in a weird way, she gets great joy screwing with his head. “Now I know what you look like when you poop your pants.”

His eyes narrow and belie a twitch of frustration, “You’re really not making this easy for me, Mindy.”

“You didn’t make it easy for me when you pretty much broke your own leg running away from me, like I was a bear trap, or had leprosy or something.”

“That’s fair.” He nods, smoothing his hands down the front of his pants.

“Wait, you’re not supposed to leave the Tri-State area.” She goes to check his ankle, like he has a lo-jack or a device that explodes when he crosses state lines.

Danny redirects her by guiding her chin back up with his finger, “I told them I had to go see about a girl.”

“That’s a line from _Good Will Hunting._ ”

“I told you already that I saw it. It’s not a secret. What? Only you can make references to pop culture? Please.” He senses that his slight and playful irritation has knocked him off book, “I had to come see you.”

Mindy smiles.

“They, y’know, allow day trips. I’m just not allowed to live out of state. Plus, I’m not on probation anymore.” He shakes his head. “All this is beside the point, Mindy. Don’t get me off track.”

“What track are you supposed to be on?”  She isn't trying to be cruel, but she figures he's only going to be at her mercy a minimum amount of times, and she's seizing the moment.  She forgives him so easily, but he doesn't  have to know that.  

“First of all, I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry that I was an asshole earlier. Or all the time, I can never tell."  He places a hand on her hip casually. "And I came because I want to take you to the Prom.”

“No.”  She states, simply.

“No.” Danny blinks, twice, “What?!?!” He’s back at incredulous.

“No,” Mindy rests her hand on his forearm, trying more to steady herself than anything, “It’s not that I don’t want you to take me, but you can’t. We have super strict policies, and the people who buy the ticket have to be the ones who attend…it’s a whole safety thing.”

“So I came all this way to _not_ go to the Prom with you?” He’s beginning to turn red, and his jaw is starting to tense, but she watches as he bites it back. His shoulders relax away from his ears. "I think we both know that rules are meant to be broken, Mindy."

“The Prom isn’t why you came, Danny.” She doesn’t know how she does it, when she’s with him. He brings something out of her, something that lies dormant with other boys, but emerges only when Danny is near. She grabs his arm, this time to guide him inside the house. She notices Danny’s familiar block writing where the sleeve of his hoodie is pushed up. I WAS JUST NOWHERE NEAR YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD. I HAD TO SEE ABOUT A GIRL. TO ME, YOU ARE PERFECT. NOBODY PUTS BABY IN A CORNER. “Oh my God, you dork.”

The reddish color that tinges his cheeks begins to travel down his neck.  “I know you like stuff like that.” He lowers his eyelashes, embarrassed. “And I can Google just as well as anyone.” He smells good, exactly like he always does, like his sweatshirt did, and it makes her woozy with need.

“Why would I be in a corner?” Curiosity is killing her.

“At the prom, if your strict upbringing doesn’t allow you to…Listen, I was nervous. I was accounting for all factors.”

“Just be you, Danny. I like you better than those movies.”

He squints, “You like me?” She nods, her eyes wide, “I missed you, Mindy.” He says it in a whisper, dropping his garment bag, and resting both his hands on her hips now.

“It was three days.” The longest fucking three days of her seventeen years on Earth.

The darkness falls over his eyes, “I hated it.”

“I hated it too.”

“I’m sorry, it was just… I realized something that scared the shit out of me.” His breathing is getting ragged, and she can feel his pulse racing through the fabric of his clothing. “I think I’m falling for you.” He says it in a rush, so low that it is difficult to make out at first, but as it lands in her language receptors, she trembles involuntarily.

It’s her turn to smile broadly, “Are you worried I won’t catch you?”

His lips curl, “A little.” She knows what it takes him to say it out loud, to tell her how he feels, not to mention copping to his fears.  

“I’ll catch you.” It feels like hours pass, with him just standing still, considering what she has just said. She figures that he's just checking to make sure he still has all his limbs.  He pulls her closer, brushing his lips over her forehead and sinking his face into the top of her hair. She’s glad she used the lilac lavender shampoo. “Danny, you don’t have to be afraid of…anything, not with me.”

“I know, I know.” He mumbles into her hair. “So you still won’t go to Prom with me?”

She groans, “I wish I could, Danny. I do. But the rules. Plus, what kind of dickhead move would it be to call Peter four hours in advance and tell him that I tossed him over for a juvenile delinquent from the Island?”

“Ugh,” He rolls his eyes, “You’re right. And ahem, reformed juvenile delinquent. But please, promise me: no grinding on or slow dancing with Mr. Prom. Please.”

“Deal.” Mindy kisses Danny’s cheek, and then his chin, and his jaw. His skin is smooth under her lips. “He’s pervy anyway.”

“You’re killing me, Lahiri.” Danny groans, steering Mindy's back toward the doorway that connects the foyer to the living room.  Danny frames her face with his hands and his eyelashes touch her before his mouth does. His kiss is soft and slow at first, but builds gradually to a crescendo.  He works down her neck, to her clavicle, where his downy hair tickles against her skin.  He returns to her lips, seeking out her tongue, nibbling on her bottom lip hungrily.   Mindy thinks that she hears a choir of angels, and she definitely feels the reverberations in her bones. His lips still taste like sugar. She'd like to write couplets and sonnets and iambic pentameter about his lips, but not now.  Maybe soon. 

As they draw apart, his eyes are a bit unfocused.  Danny plants his hand low on her bottom, “We have some time, right? Let’s get a milkshake.”

She sighs, trying to recover her sense of speech.  “The kind that brings the boys to the yard? Or the ice cream?”

Danny rolls his eyes, “The ice cream, Min.”

“Let me get my shoes.”

They order one milkshake and two straws.

* * *

 

 

Mindy’s exhausted as the limo pulls up in front her house, after having spent the evening dancing her face off with her friends, and Peter, and as she was given strict instructions by her non-Prom date to keep it classy, those dances with Peter left room for the Holy Spirit. She’s pumped full of adrenaline and unmitigated joy, and the fact that Danny is falling for her has not left her consciousness for one single second the entire night. She wishes that he could have been there, for the slow dances, for the Electric Slide, for Turn Down For What. She leans her head against the cool window of the luxury car, thinking about his sweet face as he kissed her good-bye and disappeared into the early evening, promising to call her when he arrived home safely. She wishes that he could have been her date, so that they’d have those pictures and those memories built into their history, but then again, she has a pretty great memory from the afternoon too.

Maggie perks up as she notices a string of lights in the Lahiri’s driveway. “What the what?”

Mindy peers around her friend’s shoulder and realizes that her entire backyard, including trees, shrubbery and all vegetation are covered in strands and strands of white lights, supplying her yard with a transcendent glow.  “What is happening right now?” The gazebo is lit with Christmas lights as well, some white, some blue, some bright turquoise. It reminds Mindy of the ocean.

“What did he do?”

“Danny did this?"  Maggie whistles low.  "The thirst is real."

Mindy can’t get out of the back seat fast enough. She finds Danny, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and long skinny black tie, waiting near the fence line. Music plays softly in the middle distance. Danny’s expression is expectantly cautious. “Hey, Min.” _He’s doing it again_. She restrains herself from attacking him with her mouth, in the good way.

“What’s going on, Castellano?” She wants to sound tough, but she can’t even pretend to pull it off. She would prefer to puddle at his feet.

“Well, I thought if I couldn’t have you for the Prom, I would have the Prom for you. I hope it’s okay.” His voice dips, and cracks slightly, and Mindy throws her arms around him, peppering his neck, chin and jaw with little kisses. “You look beautiful.” Her prom curls have long since dissipated, and she knows that her mascara is probably located somewhere near her nose now, but it’s sweet of him to say.

“You too. You clean up nice.” She gives him an appraising smile. He looks like he’s going to walk down the red carpet at Cannes, but instead, he’s hers, and he’s _here_. “This is amazing, Danny. I can’t believe you did all of this.”

He glances down at his shoes, “I just…I thought, part of why I wanted to take you to prom, was so that…so that I could show you how I feel. I’m glad that we got to be friends, but that’s not even my favorite part. I told you that I was falling in love with you,” Danny glosses over _love_ , maybe in efforts to conceal it, but she feels its weight anyway, “But I forgot to finish the job.”

“Yeah?”

“Mindy, I think you might be the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. But you don’t know how pretty you are, so it makes you even prettier."  He strokes the side of her face, with the back of his knuckles.  She shivers.  "I know that I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way, and there’s a voice in my head that never ever thinks I’m right, but I don’t care about any of that stuff. Not anymore.” He takes a deep breath, “I know that we’re going to fight.”

Mindy nods, “A lot.”

He nods along with her, "If history is any indication.  But we’re going to make up. I can’t change the person that I am, and neither of us can change where we came from.” Mindy never could have imagined this, not if she stayed up every night picturing the grandest gesture that she could conceive, not ever. “Please don’t stop holding me to those ridiculous expectations you have.”

“Really?”

Danny continues, “I think I realized that they make me better; if I have to work for it, then I don’t just rest on what I know, which I think we both know,” he makes a thumbs down gesture, “you make me want to be better.”

She pulls back the sleeve of his coat, and his shirt, scanning his arm for crib notes. No lettering remains. “Is this Danny Castellano talking?”

He affirms, “Daniel Just Go Ahead and Leave Me Castellano is the author of this sentiment.”

Her heart breaks at the adjustment of his non-existent middle name. “So what is it that you want from me, Danny?” She thinks she knows the answer when she asks, but she doesn’t even care if there is a question anymore, she just wants him to keep looking at her like this. The lights from the trees give him an angelic countenance, and she knows he'll find it ironic when she tells him.  And she knows she'll tell him later, because she can't wait to tell her best friend about what her boyfriend just did.

He holds up two fingers.  “A couple things. One, I want you to be my girlfriend. Or whatever you kids are calling it these days.”

“You’ll be my bae?”

“I think so?” Danny raises his eyebrow, clearly having no idea what he's just agreed to, “Two, and this is the clincher, because up until now, no one else has really achieved this objective: I'm going to need you to love me back."

"Done and done."  She stands on her tiptoe and pulls his face to hers.  He's blurry, but it's a combination of her happy tears and his close proximity this time.  Everything is coming into focus now.

* * *

_**Min?  My darling, darling Min?  
** _

_**Yes, Daniel?** _

_**Bae is the Danish word for poop.** _

 

 

_**The Mindy and Danny Prom Play List** _

_**(You always say I don't listen to music from this century:  Google, baby!)** _

_**Bright Eyes-First Day of My LIfe** _

_**The National-Slow Show** _

_**Swell Season-In These Arms** _

_**Ryan Adams-My Wrecking Ball** _

_**Alkaline Trio-Every Thug Needs A Lady** _

_**_**Sam Hunt**_ -Make You Miss Me** _

_**Ben Howard-I Forget Where We Were** _

_**Dire Straits-Romeo and Juliet** _

_**Bruce Springsteen-Dancing in the Dark  
** _

_**Beyonce-XO** _

_****"You know I came here when I needed your soft voice, I needed to hear something that sounded like an answer. Now I stay here, and every day I get one.”-Alkaline Trio  
** _

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured I needed to wrap this up before the premiere. I hope I didn't disappoint anyone too greatly with the ending, and thank everyone so much for all the encouragement and comments! I seriously am addicted to the comments. They're my crack.


End file.
